Tag: gift ideas

Father’s Day is winnable, even if you start now

Father’s Day lands on the first Sunday in September. That is your runway.

It is the quieter cousin of Mother’s Day, and that is precisely why it rewards the shops that bother to prepare. Less competition for attention, and a customer who genuinely does not know what to buy.

That last part is where we earn our keep. Almost everyone finds a gift for Dad hard. The ideas feel tired. So do the thinking for them. A small, well-chosen table of answers beats a wall of unrelated stock every time.

The trick we keep coming back to is grouping the range around the person, not the product. The dad who reads. The dad who tinkers. The dad who still collects. The dad who is genuinely impossible. Each one becomes a sign, a shelf, and a thirty-second conversation your team can have with anyone who looks lost.

What tends to work in our shops

  • Quality cards and gift wrap, out early and up front.
  • Puzzle books, journals and a good pen for the reader.
  • Collectibles and hobby lines, trading cards included, for the dad who never stopped collecting.
  • A few smart novelty and desk pieces for the last-minute panic buyer.

Set the display up in the second half of August, somewhere it catches the eye on the way in, and keep it full. A picked-over stand in the final week tells customers you have run out of ideas, even when you have not.

Put a clear card and wrap zone right beside it. Plenty of people buy the gift somewhere else and still need the card, and a good card range is one of the last things a supermarket cannot beat us on. Capture that trip.

Then hold your best window and counter spots for the final week, because that is when the deciders arrive. Brief your team on the themes so they can point someone in the right direction fast.

Make the choice easy and the sale is yours.

This is one piece of advice from a kit loaded with advice about Father’s Day and other seasons from which you can win in your newsagency.

Find out more: help@newsxpress.com.au.

There is a growing market in your stationery aisle that most newsagencies are missing

Stationery has long been treated as a legacy category in newsagencies — something stocked out of habit rather than genuine commercial intent. The journalling segment is quietly changing that picture.

Young men aged 18 to 40 are buying journals in growing numbers. Not diaries. Structured formats built around habit tracking, daily reflection, and personal discipline — products that found their audience through podcasts, online communities, and a broader shift toward analogue habits in a screen-heavy world. The market data behind this trend is consistent and the trajectory is upward.

newsXpress has researched this category in depth and translated that research into practical and valuable guidance for its members.

The advice provided to newsXpress members covers more than product selection. One of the more useful insights is that this category has two distinct types of buyer, each arriving in-store with different motivations and different decision-making processes. Understanding both — and setting up the floor to serve both without confusion — is what separates a display that converts from one that sits.

The newsXpress guidance covers what to look for in product selection, how to merchandise for credibility with each shopper type, and how bundling can lift average transaction values without requiring a hard sell. It also addresses what to avoid — signals that inadvertently tell the self-purchaser the product is not for him, and which are easy to get wrong without knowing the category.

The entry point for trialling this is deliberately low. The advice is built around a small, focused range, clean execution, and a clear read on what is working before committing further. For a category that costs little to set up and carries strong margins relative to traditional newsagency lines, the risk-to-reward ratio is worth a serious look.

It is the kind of category intelligence that newsXpress brings to its members — research that an independent retailer would rarely have the time or resources to develop alone, turned into something actionable on the shop floor.

This is another example of practical help delivered to newsXpress members that helps them run more valuable retail businesses. businesses they are more likely to love. This matters.

…

newsXpress supports small local independent retailers to thrive. Find out more at help@newsxpress.com.au.

Jigsaws Worth Finding — and Worth Giving

If you love jigsaws, you know the feeling. A new puzzle on the table. The slow sort through a pile of pieces. The odd satisfaction of having nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Jigsaws are fin, good for the brain, good for your hands and good for chatting with others – at home, on holiday, just about anywhere.

Jigsaws Australia has been built for exactly that, for lovers of jigsaws and those who buy gifts for them.

The site — jigsawsaustralia.com.au — is a new store from newsXpress Pty Ltd. Not a jigsaw section tucked into a general gift shop. A proper destination, with real range and some thought behind what’s been stocked.

The new 2026 selection that is out and available now spans landscapes, botanicals, art-inspired designs, nostalgia picks, and puzzles suited to different ages and skill levels. Piece counts vary. Styles vary. There’s enough here to browse properly rather than scroll past two pages and give up.

Gift-giving is where jigsaws tend to go sideways. Not because the idea is wrong — a jigsaw is a genuinely good gift — but because the wrong puzzle ends up in the box. A 1,000-piece country vista for someone who wanted something coastal. A design that’s technically fine but doesn’t feel like the person. Jigsaws Australia is put together to help with that. The variety is broad enough that you can match the puzzle to the person rather than grab whatever looks reasonable and hope for the best.

A good jigsaw is one that actually gets opened. One that suits the space someone has, the time they want to spend, the kinds of images they’re drawn to. Getting that right is easier when the range is there to choose from.

The store is Australian-owned and operated. newsXpress Pty Ltd has spent decades working with independent retailers across Australia — this store is a natural extension of that. The range will keep growing.

We are grateful to have sourced so many well made jigsaws for people to treasure.

If you’ve been meaning to get back into puzzling, here’s your prompt. If you’re hunting for a gift that won’t end up on a shelf unopened, start here.

Visit jigsawsaustralia.com.au.